Elite: Dangerous 3.0 is among us and with all the great changes to engineering, crime & punishment, trade data, and planet textures, I found myself pleasantly surprised with Guardian content. My little experience with Guardians has been watching great content creators such as Malic_VR on Twitch. They've shown a wealth of hidden content that has been fascinating to watch, but I wasn't really interested in doing them myself. It's like watching an ARG from the outside and curious if they solve the puzzle.

I watched this video in awe, not only because the terrifying Thargoid was taken down by a small ship, but the technique used was brilliant in that it used a kiting technique and the almighty Gauss Cannon. This new weapon can exhert a Thargoid heart in 2-3 shots, and also kill the heart in about the same amount.

It inspired me. I decided to to build an Imperial Courier to do the exact same thing! I knew the Courier was as fast, if not faster, than the Cobra MK III. I engineered Grade 5 Dirty Drives, with Drag Drives Experimental, threw 2 Guardian Gauss Cannons and a Guardian Plasma Charger on there and got busy, live on Twitch. After about 13 or 14 deaths, I finally made a dent So while I killed it, I died in the process. IT COUNTS THOUGH! The more I did the fight, the easier it got until finally, my first clean solo kill:

What an amazing feeling! I'm now up to 4 clean kills and here are some key things I learned during all these fights:

You need to have a boost above 510m/s - To properly kite the Thargoid while his shield is spinning down

Use and craft heat sinks often! - I found that I not only cooled my overheating Courier from the Gauss Cannons, but the Thargoids landed less hits while cooled

Don't miss! Even if you have to take a little extra damage, landing those Gauss Cannon shots are critical!

Don't give up! Use each death (yes, you will die) to learn from your mistakes. Courier rebuy is nothing so just keep at it!

I haven't had that much fun in Elite: Dangerous and quite some time, and I'm glad there's some new challenges available for us. Now, what should we try next?